The queen's priority may have been to protect Prince William and Prince Harry, but she never misread the public temperature more than in the wake of Princess Diana's shocking death in 1997.
Promptly at 7am every morning, the curtains of the infant Prince Charles's nursery at Clarence House were opened by nannies Helen Lightbody and Mabel Anderson and his day began. Ms Lightbody was an old-fashioned martinet whose word was law. No one was allowed to interfere with her routine. After breakfast, at 9am, he was taken for a half-hour session with his mother, Princess Elizabeth, before being returned to the nursery. In the evening she visited him there when he was bathed and put to bed.
Both Charles and Andrew were sent to Gordonstoun, a tough boarding school on the remote, windswept north coast of Scotland that their father, Prince Philip, had been to.